Starring:
Guest Appearance: The Monk
Summary: Kory finally finds Novak in the dream world, and urges him to return to New York.
Date It Happened: July 26th, 2008
Inside The Ivory Tower
???
Novak has been avoiding sleeping since the incident at the Deveaux Building. He has been using stimulants to stay awake, though he had taken brief naps. He also has not been around Elisabetha much, leaving her in Emily's care. There are reasons for both of these behaviors. However, at present, Novak has finally succumbed to the siren call of sleep, in a hotel just outside Washington D.C. He doesn't know if his new goal will work out or not, seeing as his previous one failed to miserably, but he is going to try.
His dream is a jumbled collection of nonsense events and places, littered with people fighting and killing each other down on the charred, flaming ground, while Novak sits in a tower and ignores them and the chaos outside. Inside the tower, he sits in a chair, in the only room, staring at a floor-safe. He is concentrating fiercely on the safe. Eventually, the dial turns a tick without him even touching it. Then another tick. Then it spins. Finally, he sits back, and breathes out slowly, his face red from the effort of… Whatever he was doing.
It takes the Muse a significant amount of time to find the mind of Professor Garibaldi. He's outside her normal range, which is going to make this a difficult and stressful situation. Once she's established contact with his dreaming mind, she sets about unraveling all the outside aspects of the nightmarescape Novak's mind has constructed. The stone statue that is the Muse walks through the carnage, and where her steps fall, quiet happens. Weapons dissolve or turn to soap bubbles or little rains of water or blossoms. She continues walking to the tower at which point she simply leans back and walks straight up the side to perch on the window. Her face is rather disturbing, because there are empty sockets where her eyes belong. She watches him struggle with the combination lock, but does not speak. She waits for him to notice her.
Novak has finished locking the safe with his mind alone, so he notices the dying down of the battle outside relatively easily. He turns his head and sees the Kory statue at the window. "Hello, Miss Alexander," is all he says. Then he sits there and watches calmly, seemingly waiting. This is the only window in the tower, but there is a door on the other side of the round room. Whether it leads out into the open air, and a lethal drop to the ground, or whether it uses dream physics to open into some other place completely is unknown at this point. It is closed, and locked. A key hangs around Novak's neck, on a thin chain.
"Professor," Kory says, quietly. She regards him in silence for a long moment, from the window, as if she were sitting in some garden wicker chair. She seems comfortable. The door out, wherever it leads, is of no concern to her at the moment. Should he seek egress, there are ways of tracking him or bringing him right back here. Depends on whose will is stronger, and who's had more practice with lucid dreaming.
"You've made yourself very difficult to reach. But I need to talk to you briefly, and this is the safest way." She pauses for a moment, then adds, "For both of us."
Novak nods slowly. "Alright. I don't know how much time we have, but I am here and open to discussion." A pause. "For now." Then he looks to the door, checking to make sure it's still closed. "You are not the only one looking for me. I left the back door open for you. Or rather my companion did." He turns his attention back on Kory, not explaining who is 'companion' is.
The statue raises one marble brow at the mention of a companion. "I am not inclined to lead anyone to you. In fact, rather the opposite. You understand what you did the last time we met? You provoked a backslide. Months and months of hard work are in danger of unraveling now because your plan was more important than a man's life. Now the issue is to do something about you. And your plan. Before he unravels further and comes to do something more …permanent…to you." Slow, white coils of smoke begin falling from Kory's feet, as if she were made of dry ice. A chill comes with them, obscuring the floor and the vault embedded in the floor. "Pinehearst is no more," she continues, as the whitish fog rolls around the inside of the high tower's room. "What of your plans?" She doesn't use the word Thanatos, but there is a heavy tension in her posture and her words that implies she knows full well of what she speaks.
Novak arches an eyebrow of his own. "I meant that there are OTHERS who seek me. Not that you would lead them here. And you speak of months of hard work… What of the years I spent on Elisabetha? I spent quite a bit of time and effort to help her reach and maintain a certain mental state where she could obtain control over her abilities without risking herself, or anyone else. The EMOTIONS you have caused to awaken in her threaten to unleash her inner demons on us all."
He turns his attention on the safe, even as the cold smoke creeps across the floor, and just frowns. "I made a mistake. I believed that I could work around Elisabetha without being impacted by her ability. This was not the case. Those who stay around her for extended periods of time, or who are frequently exposed to her ability begin to suffer a wearing down of their neural pathways… A deadening of emotion. It blinded me to the wrongness of my former plan. It is true that there is nothing to be gained from living… That eventually the universe will burn out and there will be nothing left. But speeding up the process is as pointless as not doing anything. If it is going to happen anyway, why bother trying to end this world?" He sighs and shakes his head.
"No, that is no longer a goal of mine. Instead, I hope to make the world a better place to live in while people still exist. It might be pointless, but I would rather my daughter live safely and contentedly when I am gone."
"You underestimate your daughter's strength," is Kory's rejoinder to the counteraccusation. "She wishes to live, not merely to exist. She knows the stakes. And now that your plan is no longer to peel the world apart, she will need to know more to function than just your curriculum." She makes no apology for what she has set into motion there. Elisabetha was offered the choice, and made it of her own free will.
"That said, you sought out Sylar despite being warned not to. There hasn't been a Sylar for a long time. He acted to protect, and did so in a strictly mundane manner. You on the other hand presented another threat after the major threat was done." He would have permitted Arthur to kill everyone; Kory's pretty certain of that. But still, that he no longer wishes to end the world deserves a show of faith.
There's a rough, stone-on-stone sussurration as the statue's eyes close. when they open again, there are stone eyes there as well, rather than sockets. They're not warm human eyes, but it is at least a step in the right direction. "If you wish to make a better world, then we'll need to keep you alive so you can share life — rather than existence — with Elisabetha."
Novak barks out a laugh. "I tried to kill 'Gabriel Gray' because he is a killer himself. He will always be one. Your attempts to 'redeem' a monster like that are generous in the extreme, but… No. I will not demean your efforts. I apologize for my reaction only in so much as it was not one I would have given if I had not just come out of several months of emotionlessness. I was… Overwhelmed by conflicting feelings, but the one that stood out most was… Preservation. Perhaps love. For Elisabetha. I wanted to protect her from what I realized was a serial-killer in a room full of his preferred targets. He had just killed, so I felt he was out of control again." He shrugs. "If I had been thinking clearly, I would have gotten Elisabetha out of the building first, and worried about Syla—Gabriel, later. But with him distracted, and in a ability-nullification zone… My feelings were guiding me."
He shakes his head. "I am not trying to make excuses. You would not accept them even if I was. But I felt you deserved to know the motivation behind my actions, so that you do not see me as yet another monster that needs to be redeemed. I do not want redemption. Just the chance to do something worthwhile before I die." He sighs and looks at his hands. "I have at least several more years left in me. Maybe a couple decades. I have seen so much horror in the nearly five decades I have been alive so far, that it is hard to imagine going through two or three more… But if those years can be productive, as they used to be, when I was teaching people all over the world… I will keep trying. You don't have to be involved. Infact, I would prefer it if you weren't." He gets up from his chair, and walks over to the floor safe. "Just leave Elisabetha alone. She can do what she wishes, including visiting you, if she cares to. But soon enough things will not be so easy on her, or me, or you, or anyone. If she is being pressured to be something or do something…" He looks at Kory meaningfully.
"You are speaking from a place of ignorance to justify yourself," Kory says coldly, the cold fog creeping up to knee height now. "He has not killed — other than Arthur Petrelli — in a very long time. Your opinion is what it is, Professor Garibaldi, but the facts are what they are." The stony silence that comes with his next remark may well be interpreted most easily as — well, too late. Kory has long thought of the man as a monster, but not one who can be redeemed, because his goal was literally, the end of the world. In the dreamscape, it is unlikely he's lying about his change of heart, however, so she does not say so. "Elisabetha's choices are her own, Professor. I have not visited her. She came to me that morning. She came to me because she was worried about you. Despite your best efforts to kill her emotions, she was worried, afraid, concerned. And even before the abilities were nullified, we saw no hint of her 'inner demons' presence. None whatsoever." Which might prove that love is stronger than fear, but Kory's not going to say that to a man she perceives as a cynic. "The question now is, what do we do to keep Mr. Grey from triggering to Sylar now that he perceives you as a threat."
Novak sighs again, shaking his head. "As I said: I do not expect you to accept excuses. I was trying to EXPLAIN, not justify. However, I do not think that Mister Gray will be an issue anymore. As long as no one tells him where I am, we will likely never meet face to face again." He turns away when the door in the tower unlocks with a loud click, and then swings open slowly. On the other side is an asian man in the robes of a Buddhist monk (or one of the sects at least), with a shaved head. His eyes appear to be made of the ocean, beneath the waves.
"<It is time,>" the man says in Mandarin Chinese. Novak responds, "<Yes.>" Then he looks at Kory. "I did not say you visited her again. What I said was not to do so in the future, unless she wishes it. But go ahead and do what you want, if that is how you feel. It won't matter soon." Then he says, "<None of you will matter,>" in Chinese. The monk-like man moves aside in the doorway, which appears to open up into an infinitely long, white hallway, with door after door after door after door on both sides. Novak moves to leave through the door, unless Kory has something else to say, or attempts to stop him.
The door is open, but the way out of it? Not so much. "Professor Garibaldi, you do not realize who you're dealing with. Even if I did not tell him where to find you — if he wanted to find you — he will and you will die. I am trying to find a way to save your life so you can just live with your child, who loves you." That Elisabetha does love him is obvious. "You brought a madman into my home, who harmed and threatened me and mine when we have never done anything to you and yours but try to help. And still I am trying to help." She regards the monk for a long serious moment. "I will do what I can to keep him away from you as long as I can, but it would be better if you came back to New York to remove yourself as a threat to him altogether in a way neither you nor he can dispute." She rises and steps back onto the ledge. "Go to sleep thinking of me and I will know. Throwing away your life would really put a crimp in your plan to make a better world, Professor."
And having said her piece, the Muse transforms into an icicle, stretched horizontally toward him. She streaks past him and his companion like an arrow fired from a bow, and is soon lost in the long corridor.